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Google Summer of Code 2008 Mentor Organization List Announced

Summer is going to be upon us very soon and it looks certainly awesome. As usual Google is brightening it up. Google Summer of Code or more lovingly called GSoC or SoC has been announced for the fourth consecutive run! (Meanwhile let's hope lives would be better for the people affected by the forces of nature in past few days.)

Google Summer of Code is a student program where university (BSc, MSc, etc.) students can work for an Open Source software project for 3 months under Google sponsorship. I was one of the lucky students last year (but had to resign due to a couple of domestic bereavements). This years program is announced and I hope at least a few excellent coders will be interested in this news. Please convey this news to relevant students, while I check out any interesting project for me. :) And remember last year about a 20 add students were selected from Sri Lanka. So don't think you don't have any chance. You just have to be enthusiastic, skilled (in coding) and could allocate time (which I know by experience is important).

Google Summer of Code is one of the best ways to get industry level experience, make connections with a lot of important programmers and projects in the world, contribute to Open Source projects where thousands of people will be using your code. To top it off Google is paying each selected student a stipend of $4,500 which is over LKR4.5 lakhs.

Google Summer of Code, running for the fourth consecutive year is now announced and will accept student application between 24-31 March. Any interested student can see the list of mentoring organizations and their suggested ideas in http://code.google.com/soc/2008Actually, those ideas are just suggestions and students are welcome to propose their own ideas.

This year 175 Open Source projects are there for the students to work with. Students will find familiar names among them like Apache, Google, Nmap, Fedora, Debian, GCC, PostgreSQL, MySQL, PHP, Git :) , Subversion, Pidgin, Adium, Python, Django, GIMP, OpenMoko, GNOME, KDE, Vim, FFMpeg, VideoLAN, Samba, Sahana, WordPress, Pentaho, OLPC. etc. Please note that this is not about developing applications using those, but developing those themselves. GSoC selection is a very competitive process and good skills in development is required.The SoC FAQ will answer your burning questions about the particulars like how to apply, eligibility criteria and etc. So please get SoC to the attention and encourage students with strong programming skills to apply.

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